Wallace Stevens\' Poem \"The Death

¶ … Wallace Stevens' poem "The Death of a Soldier" with William Faulkner's story "Two Soldiers"

Two opposite points-of-view about the human sacrifice on the altar of one's country, in the name of freedom, are to be found in the works of two American writers: the poem "The Death of a Soldier," by Wallace Stevens and "Two Soldiers," written by Faulkner.

The Death of a Soldier" is one of the four poems Stevens rescued from "Lettres d'un Soldat," a collection of letters written by Eugene Lemercier, a young French painter killed in World War I - and has the identity of a war poem. Wallace Stevens puts in poetic words his vision on what the others see as a heroic death: the ultimate sacrifice in war. This sacrifice in the name of the noblest of causes, used by the great artists of the humankind as a subject in their most admired works is reduced in the words of Wallace's poem to a simple fall, while the wind stops."(Wallace, online text, copyright 1998-2000).

Faulkner, on the other hand glorifies the human selfimposed sacrifice in his very touching short story Two Soldiers." He makes use of all the elements that arise the compasion and touch the strings of sensibility. What can be more touching than to see an nighteen year old who, in his love for his country, decides to leave the one he love most in this worl, his nine-year-old brother, and to join the army in fighting against the Japonese, in Worl War I. His words go directly to the reader's heart: "I got to go.... I just ain't going to put up with no folks treating the Unity States that way"(Faulkner,1993).

Wallace, the poet, distillates to the subject of the death in war and is also able to impress by depicting a picture in autumn. He separates life from death, which is usually seen as an integrated part of life. He makes an unnatural thing out of the death of a soldier: "Life contracts and death is expected, / as in a season of autumn"(Wallace, 1998-2000). Autumn, however is in the nature of things. The leaves are sacrificed and returned to the earth where they ware born from. This happens every year, regardless of the leaves' will, inexorably, as nature works.

There is nothing grandiose in the scene created by Wallace because there is no hope or no rationality the process. For everyone, autumn means death in order for the nature to be able to come to life all over again, every spring. There is no hope of resurrection in the death of the soldier in his poem. Compared to the image of the soldier who joins the army to help protecting his country against the evil, acclaimed after his death, brought out of anonymity, honored by his country and admired internationally, when chosen as a hero of a story by a Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner, the soldier in the poem dies alone and calls for no parade. His death has no significance and it does not contribute to anything. No one benefits from it, no one cares. War is thus seen as a useless action causing losses like this that serve for nothing.

Wallace Stevens did not write about the glory of the past and the courage, the way Faulkner did. William Faulkner felt that the problems of the human heart, the capabilities of the human spirit were the only thing worth writing about. Two Soldiers" is a patriotic short story in which a child narrates about loyalty and endurance through war. It is a story about courage and selflessness, about the close connection between the simple elements of rural life, such as farm labor and familial love, and the patriotism for a vast America that appreciation of these simplicities helps to foster.